Optimize your msp sales process for education

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all right jason we're going beyond the blog again this time we're talking about uh customer education i think in cyber security and really it really stretches along pretty much all of it but education is paramount it's a huge part of what fmsps do um and it's just the nature of the beast and so when we opened up the article uh you know my first touch on it was really to kind of go back to the days of like the infomercials and that kind of thing and that was really my first exposure to that like educational marketing like taking the extra time uh so let me just start there and say like what was your favorite infomercial growing up or even recently yeah i think you know i still use the term from an infomercial that i grew up with um the set it forget it said it and forget it i think that was the rotisserie ron popeil yeah yeah so i'm old enough to have seen some real good infomercials out there i love the long form um but that one comes to mind and maybe more recently kevin the billy mays before he passed away he was was quite a pitch man yeah and that's you know what's funny is like those are two true legends like you know and i am i consider myself like somewhat of a i guess modern marketer you know like i use a pretty up-to-date means of communication and uh delivery and all those things but like you have to appreciate that you know you have to appreciate ron being able to invent a product go to market with it and then i think he set a record for like he sold a million dollars worth of those rotisseries in one hour on qvc i mean like that's the legendary that is yeah the george foreman grill comes to mind um you know i'm familiar with buying media in a previous life to to buy air time late and run infomercial slots and uh you know you gain leads and you resell those leads back up that was part of the subprime uh beast of feeding the lead beast at the time and um infomercials kind of played a big part of it and so we really try to you know dissect them and figure out like why why is this any different you know like why is it different than walking down a you know department store aisle and seeing a rotisserie uh and you know what makes it what's the impact and i think it is the education it's like the fact the info not so much the marshall you know what i mean it's it's all about the information who what why and how and making sure that someone has like that entire picture so that they can make a decision and maybe making the educational process fun so you know in the article you know there's a there's some fun things with some fun ideas and fresh takes um so i think like you you said with the educational undertaking sometimes the tendency can be uh you know i don't want to learn there's some natural resistance to wanting to learn anything new or sit down and pay attention to something from that period of time you know that can be a challenge too so i look forward to thinking of those different ways to making it fun and you know overcoming the monotony of the challenge of the training process it's you know and it's so hard when it's like something's really interesting to you but not the end customer it's like impossible to even quantify you know what i mean um this didn't really make it into the article but one of the things that i was thinking about it's kind of a little story but you know when i uh i moved a few years ago and i when i met my neighbor for the first time he uh was started telling me about like the radon levels in the neighborhood and he was like you have to go buy a radon detector and this is why and he was talking about the basements and the cracks of the foundation you know our house was like built in the 1800s and um i was ready for this guy to like open up his trunk and try to sell me one like on the spot you know it didn't didn't go that far but like i it was something that i never even thought of i've probably walked by radon detectives and home depot a million times never for once thought that i needed one until someone built a case for me right and educated me on why i should go get one sure enough go get one put it in the basement you know beep beep something goes off and so then you start to realize like okay why do i need this what what do i need to do you go through the steps of remediation and all the stuff does that mean that i need to be like interested in radon 100 of the time it's like no but at the same time you need you need that base layer of education right yeah yeah absolutely and his passion was what kind of was the hook that set and had he only had a couple of those in his trunk sounds like his passion would have would have would have sold itself so uh let me ask you this from from the standpoint of viper and you know the educational part of it because you do a lot of like b2c as well and so what are some of the things that vipre does to really educate and you know from a product standpoint and like how do you see that changing the way that your customers behave well you mentioned in the article you know uh free free group q a sessions and that jogged my memory into something that we do that's maybe similar which would be user groups and the same in the same avenue to take kind of a small group of people and have more of a one-on-one connection and actually go over using the product that's what i always liked about of the user groups and yet the educational process that way it's it's hands-on uh but from a collateral perspective um and we've talked about it before kevin we try to um give without expecting any get and we do that with materials that you know we think provide mind share provide security tips and techniques and tricks if you will uh to all the you know the it pros out there so i think there's commonality in your article and what we do as a vendor um in the education process out to our channel partners through those vehicles um in the same vein that you know sitting through a video is hard um it's still a great tool and if i'm not skipping ahead i don't want to forget when you talk about explainer videos in the article and you allude to that nobody you know wants to sit through one but there may be a time where you actually need to to utilize one well in your example you you kind of unveiled a phishing example or a suspicious email that goes to the help desk wouldn't it be great if the tech could send a video and wouldn't it be great if either in the video or otherwise was the upsell and we've talked about using your help desk before for the upsell hey i noticed that you don't have um advanced threat protection in your email so that that really resonated with me coming when you talk about those videos and what you can do with them that's the thing is like the missing ingredient right it's context it's like if it's out of context i don't think it gets consumed if you are so like essentially what you need to do is have this content developed and ready for when that context comes into play and so now you know you have these videos um that like you said the perfect example is the phishing one because that's something that happens frequently and it's great to just be able to say you know okay your technician handles this on a routine basis like they know really what to say and whatever but like wouldn't it be awesome to be able to just provide that extra step and and shoot off a video that like was branded and had the company you know and and the other thing that shouldn't be overlooked either is like standardization of this like explaining finding the best way to explain it and then always explaining it that way you know what i mean because if you're relying on a level one technician that's maybe not so comfortable explaining a lot of these things because they don't have the experience too it's a good way to like take control of that as well you know i like the notion uh in the article about the social media uh and you know the idea of these grip campaigns drip educational items and that dragged my memory also and you know kind of mapped that to to viper wouldn't it be neat if i was you know msp that i've got security awareness training as part of my um offerings and that's something that's the adoption rate is is growing but there's still some resistance to um you know so in in terms of the the social media play there with the free tips and tricks the security advice that you can regularly kind of come in and drop you alluded to the same thing in your article i thought that was i thought that was great advice but i saw it connect that step further to actually be able to leverage a product or service that you might want to break through back into your social campaigns and try to give it you know grease the skids on the social for the product set over here yeah and you and i both like we i feel like we feel the same way about security awareness and like how it's one of these products that i feel like if it's so undervalued i think for what it does um there's getting someone in like it's a very entry-level product to where if you get the right decision maker on it and you get it in front of them and they understand the value of it it just instantly clicks right but it's one of those things where it's you know it can really drive your like land and expand strategy because you don't have to sell an entire managed services bundle to be able to sell someone this uh security awareness training right and it's also a product where uh there might be other msps floating around that don't have a partner to resell it or you know just really are not on board with doing it haven't adapted it and now it's like another uh check box that you can provide that someone else can um and so that the great thing about that and the way that it ties through is that's all about education right and so um when you combine that with like training resources educational resources um you know i've even looked into the ability to like provide these uh either at cost or even free from an msp standpoint like imagine just being able to provide customers uh free phishing uh you know like security awareness training phishing simulation that kind of thing either on a temporary basis or a permanent basis and just let it open up all of the doors for everything else you know because it's he it's one of those things that like it does teach it does what it's supposed to do and that's educate um and obviously like inform and improve overall i think the organization's stance on security and i think with security awareness training it's important to realize that you want to create a culture of empowerment rather than a culture of fear um and you know that's some feedback that i'm starting to hear uh from partners that you know too much education risks analysis paralysis and now the help desk is blown up because they can't even go through their inbox an employee can't even look at their inbox without fear of oh my gosh if i click on this the company is telling me that i might bring my the company to the knees it'd be my fault so do you think that there's anything to that how do you see that line of um empowerment versus here in the educational process it's you know it's a great point because i had a situation recently where um i was i had set up a zoo meeting with someone uh and they were gonna invite like some people on their side uh that i was unfamiliar with and so a few it was like a few analysts and things working on like a content project and um i started to get these responses to my calendar event in like different languages and so i was like oh this is really weird so like i kind of somewhat overreacted like i i deleted the calendar event i i deleted the zoom like i went through and i like set everything back up and i contacted the person on linkedin because i didn't want to reply to them via email um and so i went through like all of these steps to like burn this meeting and then try to like contact them because i was like oh this person must have gotten like or something you know right so it turns out they had uh like one of their analysts was just also speaks korean and happened to have his browser in korean when he accepted the request and so when it replied to my thing and said that he accepted it replied in a different period and so it was like one of those things where it kind of proves what you said it's like you can be there is this sense of like overreaction and um it's difficult if you're if you're just paranoid all the time that every email is a phishing email like that doesn't solve a problem either it's like sure that person has awareness but they're like too woke at that point you know that's right they're they're too woke and you know by the way you know what are you looking at me so hard for about trying to be the last line of defense you know in business emails can't somebody help you know help me out so there's kind of the pendulum swinging about well who who bears the responsibility and i think that you can't go too far and expect too much out of an employee after all they aren't i.t pros you